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Thursday, October 27, 2005

Portobello Pizza

Last night, I felt like having something different so I scrummaged through my fridge and freezer for leftovers, surfed the Net a bit to get some divine inspiration and came up with this portobello pizza. Not sure if you notice by reading my blog but I love mushrooms of all kinds plus cheeses of all tastes. There is always a chunk of parmesan and cheddar cheese in my fridge especially for those cheesy moments. Another thing I absolutely love is roasted garlic, I'll add them anything I roast and savour their sweetness with the dish.

This portobello pizza was inspired by a description of California Pizza Kitchen's menu that featured a pizza made from portobello mushrooms, thyme and roasted garlic. I suspect this pizza is out of commission as their recent menus only have a mushroom variety pizza. No mention was made on what cheese they used, so I added parmesan as I don't really like the taste of mozzarella.

If you wish to recreate this portobello pizza, it's pretty simple. All you need to do is first, roast your whole garlic cloves with a drizzle of olive oil in an oven for about 40 minutes (the oven should have a temperature of 200C). When done, remove the skins and press the garlic puree on the pizza base to smear them. Reserve some whole cloves to toss them with the mushrooms. Slice the portobellos, I even used the stems which I diced and fry in olive oil plus butter. Let them cook a bit and sprinkle sea salt and black pepper to taste. Add fresh thyme leaves which will give your mushrooms a lovely flavour. Remove from pan and sprinkle this on top of your pizza base. Grate some fresh parmesan on top (I did not use much, just a bit as I wanted the mushroom flavours not to be overwhelmed). Heat up oven to 220C and cook for about 25 minutes or until crispy. Serve piping hot.

I suspect not many people will like this kind of pizza as Malaysians tend to love the American kind with lots of tomato sauce plus stringy mozzarella cheese but for me, it was heaven since it combined all my favourite flavours: the meaty portobellos, sweet roasted garlic, aromatic thyme and parmesan cheese. Sorry for the quite ugly pix as I still have not figured out how to photograph pizza! It's either the flat whole look or the slices which I decided to do so it kinda looks messy.